Kevin – by Sarah Langfield
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Eulogies are exceptionally difficult to write.
They aren’t like narratives, with fanciful characters that only exist in Times New Roman (sometimes Calibri, never Courier). Stories are easier. So, when tasked with writing a eulogy, I wrote a story instead.
This one.
It isn’t very good.
Writers often say that about their own work. Why? Because they are nervously serving to their cannibal reader a charcuterie board of their soul while also trying to uphold the Western etiquette of modesty.
This is not the same. This story is not good.
If you have been paying attention, you will know the first sentence contained a major spoiler: someone dies.
First strike.
Are you wondering who? Probably not, as you aren’t invested in any of the characters yet: you don’t even know who they are.
Second strike.
So far, you only know three things:
It can’t be me, as I’m writing this now, and it would be difficult for a dead narrator to hold a pen.
My name is Joe. You didn’t know that, but you do now.
The title of this unfortunate story is ‘Kevin’, which you’ve deduced from point 2 is not me.
Kevin was one of those cousins you avoided at family events.
Pardon my use of second person. Kevin was a cousin I had growing up who I tried to avoid at family events.
There wasn’t anything particularly unpleasant about him, he was just different. For example, he had an odd way of speaking. His intonation, his choice of words, the jokes that always related to superhero movies – it was like Siri trying to imitate the way a real human speaks. (No, Kevin wasn’t a robot; this isn’t that kind of story.)
He wore one type of specific yellow polo shirt exclusively, because he liked the texture of the fabric. His mum bought them in bulk, in every size he’d need for the rest of his life, just in case they stopped making them.
He never got to wear the largest.
Kevin was obsessed with trains. As a child, he would watch CCTV footage on YouTube of trains pulling in and out of stations, which was both annoying and tedious for me whenever I visited.
Kevin had an imaginary friend called Thomas, which was an incredibly creative and completely unique name for someone obsessed with locomotives to choose.
I didn’t realise until adulthood that Kevin had autism.
Only then did I start to feel guilty about the way I had treated him.
When Aunty Mary (Kevin’s mum) forced me to help build his model trains every Christmas, I would deliberately give him the wrong instructions while sporadically punching the air, shouting each time, ‘Was Thomas standing there? Did I get him? How about now?’
(I hit Thomas three times and broke his nose on one occasion.)
Sadly, the protagonist in this story is an arsehole.
Third strike.
I’m not confessing my childhood sins because I think they are funny, because I don’t. I’m ashamed to say that’s the kind of bully I was. I’m bringing it up now because it explains how I reconnected with Kevin later in life.
Pondering my childhood and possibly experiencing a quarter-life crisis, I called Aunty Mary to ask how Kevin was.
‘Oh, you know, he’s okay,’ she sighed. ‘I just worry about him. He doesn’t really have anyone except me and his father. And Thomas.’
‘Is Thomas still around?’
‘Oh, yes. So long as Kevin doesn’t have any real friends, Thomas will always be here.’
So that’s how I ended up at their house on a Saturday morning, holding a peace offering in the shape of a model train set. Kevin was in the garage, wearing his yellow polo shirt.
‘Hi, Joseph!’
I cringed. Didn’t he remember that I hated being called by my full name?
It had been a few years since I had seen Kevin. He had grown a wispy moustache and his glasses were thicker than before, magnifying his brown eyes so they were out of proportion with his thin face. He bounced on his toes, his excitement palpable.
‘I thought you could help me with this.’ I held up the box, distracted by the scene behind him. Kevin had built a cubby house entirely of LEGO. It was large enough for a grown person to crouch in.
‘Wow, Kev, did you make that?’ I asked, genuinely impressed.
He nodded, eyes wide and gleaming.
‘Need some help?’
I was surprised when he pointed to the large plastic tubs pushed against the garage wall, which still held a bit more LEGO. Maybe he’d forgotten how helpful I was with model trains.
‘Jesus, how long did this take you?’ I set the train set aside, and later wished I’d kept the receipt, because clearly Kevin’s interests had changed in the last decade.
‘Five hundred and thirty-three hours.’ He pointed to the walls of the garage, which were plastered with colourful photographs of LEGO houses, each more elaborate than the next. Some had slides attached to the roof, while others had sandpits or kiddie pools. One was in the shape of a tractor.
‘… and this one was hard because it had a chimney on it, and I had never done a chimney before, and this was the first two-storey house I did—’
‘Wow, these are really cool!’ I interrupted, realising he was going to say something about each photograph, and there must have been almost a hundred.
‘What do you do with them afterwards?’
‘Just show Mum,’ he shrugged.
‘And you do it on your own?’
‘No, Thomas helps me in the morning. In the afternoon he has a nap.’
I felt a pang of guilt. ‘Hey, about Thomas, I’m really sorry for being a jerk to him when we were growing up.’
‘Remember that time you broke his nose?’ Kevin asked gleefully.
‘Yeah, sorry about that.’
‘Don’t say sorry to me. He’s right there.’ Kevin pointed to the second level of the LEGO house.
As I looked at the small room on the top level, I felt Kevin’s unblinking gaze on me. With a reluctant sigh, I walked over and took a deep breath before raising my voice.
‘Uh, hi, Thomas,’ I started lamely. ‘I just wanted to say that I’m really sorry about how I treated you when I was a child. I was a bully and I shouldn’t have picked on you for being different. I hope you can forgive me?’
‘He can’t hear you.’ Kevin said, and he pulled over a stepladder.
‘What?’ I asked, looking at the ladder in confusion.
‘You have to go up there.’ Kevin wasn’t smiling. He really wanted me to climb up to the second level of his LEGO house and speak to his imaginary friend.
‘I— I do?’
Kevin nodded solemnly.
‘Err, that floor is only three layers of LEGO deep, Kev. I’ll break it.’
Kevin continued to stare.
‘Fine.’ I climbed the ladder in pure exasperation, then crouched down to an almost foetal position to squeeze myself onto the second storey, where the LEGO beneath me started to sink.
‘I’m very sorry, Thomas. I am a horrible person. Please forgive me.’ It was my turn to talk like an AI bot.
As I finished my sentence, the LEGO gave way.
I may have only been a metre off the ground, but there is one thing about LEGO that everyone knows: falling on them bloody hurts.
Kevin took one look at me writhing in pain and burst out laughing so hard his glasses slid off his nose and he gasped for air.
‘Thomas got his revenge, huh?’ I muttered.
Kevin didn’t reply.
From then on, Kevin, Thomas and I started hanging out every other day, mostly building LEGO houses, but sometimes gaming or eating out. We always saved a seat for Thomas, whose pranks were getting more painful.
It was Kevin’s 19th birthday when the accident happened.
To celebrate, I took Kevin and Thomas bowling, even though I had to foot Thomas’s bill. His antics were becoming borderline abusive: on this occasion he stole my socks and got shoes that were way too big for me. I clomped around in the sticky shoes, feeling like a clown. He tossed my wallet down the lane, making me slide after it and earning dirty looks from the staff. He smashed the air hockey puck into my face, leaving me with a bruise. I was losing patience, but every time I complained, Kevin reminded me of some childhood prank I had pulled on Thomas, like the time I shoved him in the oven, and I would be guilted into putting up with whatever punishment Thomas concocted.
As we headed out to the car park, Kevin had the nerve to suggest that Thomas should drive us home. That was when I snapped.
‘Thomas is not driving,’ I growled.
‘Remember when you ran him over with the lawn mower?’ Kevin said, trying to guilt-trip me with that familiar glee in his smile.
‘Vaguely.’ I rolled my eyes.
‘He lost half of his hair that day, and it never grew back properly.’ Kevin blocked my way, his arms crossed.
‘He can’t drive us home,’ I repeated loudly.
‘Why not?’
‘Because he’s not real, Kevin! He’s not real!’ I yelled.
The car park fell silent. Kevin glared. My head throbbed.
I thought Kevin would follow. I thought he would get in. I thought he would move out of the way of my reversing car.
He didn’t.
There was a loud thud, followed by a scream. The handbrake screeched as I yanked it up and jumped out.
Kevin was lying behind the car.
Some people say I did it on purpose, that I had been pushed too far. But I never meant for him to die.
‘You— you hit him!’ Kevin was lying on the ground sobbing, although there were no tears in his eyes. His hand was resting on thin air, just behind the tyre.
‘Is that Thomas?’ I asked.
He nodded. ‘You’ve always hated him, Joseph! And now you’ve killed him!’
Part of me felt sorry for murdering Kevin’s imaginary friend, part of me wanted to laugh at the ridiculousness of it, but mostly I was just glad Kevin was okay.
‘What can I do to make it up to you?’ I sighed.
So that’s how I ended up here, in my best suit, tasked with writing a eulogy for a person who never existed.
Aunty Mary and Uncle Jack had put on their finest outfits, but they looked puzzled and uncomfortable as they sat on the couch, facing the LEGO coffin we had built in their living room. Kevin came out of his bedroom, dressed for the funeral in his bright yellow polo shirt. He solemnly touched the coffin with one hand, holding a plastic bag in the other.
I coughed to get everyone’s attention.
‘Thomas was Kevin’s best friend. He was there for him when no one else was. He understood Kevin like no one else did. But Kevin has another friend now. And I will try to be every bit as good and loyal and kind as Thomas was. Goodbye, Thomas.’
At the end of this short speech I realised how small the coffin was. I wondered how Thomas fit in there, curled up like a ball, and fought against a snort of laughter, which Kevin must have mistaken for grief because he pulled me close and patted my back.
We all lowered our heads for a brief silence.
‘Alright, Joseph, do you want to bury this in the backyard?’ Kevin asked.
Uncle Jack was furious that we had dug up his new lawn to make room for a small coffin. But Kevin was pleased.
‘Well, time to go home,’ I said, rubbing my blistered hands on my jeans once I’d finished filling the hole. ‘See you tomorrow?’
Kevin nodded. ‘Here, take this. It’s too big for me. I was going to give it to Thomas, but you murdered him.’
He pulled a large, yellow polo shirt from the plastic bag. It was too big for me too.
I put it on anyway.
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Image: Xavi Cabrera - Unsplash
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